In the manufacture of insulation blankets of mineral fibers, such as glass fibers, it is sometimes economically efficient to produce the insulation material in a bisected form. Bisected insulation material is an insulation blanket which is slit horizontally as the blanket travels along a horizontal conveyor. The upper and lower layers remain juxtaposed, and are rolled up and packaged for shipping to a fabrication customer or other ultimate insulation user. The insulation fabricator or user will use the bisected insulation rolls to insulate such items as appliances, flexible insulation ducts, and manufactured housing. Typically this insulation material has a density within the range of from about 0.3 to about 1.0 pounds per cubic foot (pcf), and a tensile strength within the range of from about 10 to about 30 pounds per six inches of width of a two inch thick R-6 insulation product having a density of 0.8 pounds pcf.
The insulation fabricator or end user needs a simple and convenient way to pay out the bisected insulation roll so that the fabricator can use one of the layers while rewinding the other layer for use at a later time. Existing machines for paying out bisected insulation material are generally deficient in several respects. First, such machines are usually complex to operate and expensive to build. Often they are motorized, requiring an operator as well as a fabricator to receive the payed out insulation material. Another deficiency of many payout machines is that no means is provided for preventing telescoping of the rewind roll as the second layer is being rewound while the first layer is being payed out. Telescoping causes tearing or other degradation of the insulation material. Also, a common deficiency of such machines, particularly if the machines are motorized, is that the machines tend to break the insulation material, which has a relatively low tensile strength. Finally, for machines which rely on a friction drive to drive the rewind roll with the rotation of the supply roll, the weight of the rewind roll as it reaches its maximum size tends to crush or cause pinching and tearoff of the supply roll as it reaches its smallest diameter during the payout.
There is a need for a simple-to-operate, low cost, payout machine for bisected insulation material which avoids the problems of the prior art machines.